In a letter to John Quinn, dated 4 October 1907, Yeats wrote: ‘Augustus John has been staying at Coole. He came there to do an etching of me for the collected edition [see N05218].... I don't know what John will make of me. He made a lot of sketches with the brush and the pencil to work the etching from when he went home. I felt rather a martyr going to him ... he exaggerates every little hill and hollow of the face till one looks a gypsy grown old in wickedness and hardship.’

This drawing is one of those pencil studies for the portrait of Yeats now in the City Art Gallery, Manchester, to which the Tate Gallery oil portrait is related.

Published in:Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I